Eric Mack On-Line

I'm having a hard time finding the answer to this, so I'll ask the community.

The dock for the Lenovo T60p has a Dual-Link DVI output, and I can presently drive a Dell 24" LCD panel at 1900x1200.

For extreme mind mapping, I want to drive a Dell 30" display at 2560x1600 from my ThinkPad T60p.

The T60p has a ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 chipset, which as best as I can tell should  work at 2560x1600.

Of course, I'd like some assurance before I move on this. If anyone has done this, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to research.

As my readers know, I've been coaching robotics teams in the U.S. First competitions for the past six years. (Our all-girls homeschool Jr. Robotics team, the LEGO Mountaineers, have earned top awards at several competitions.)  In that time, I've watched robotics go from being the side line geek activity to something very cool. (It's still a geek activity)

This year, Dean Kamen encouraged the FIRST Teams to get the word out that FIRST is a viable education program to encourage young people to pursue studies and even careers in science and technologies. Well the White House got the message, looked at the 15-year successful track record of the FIRST Robotics program and will be honoring the top team in each category on Monday at the White House. How cool is that?

To the FIRST Community:

We are thrilled to announce that three FIRST teams will be honored by President George W. Bush at the White House on Monday, April 30, 2007.  

Continue Reading "Build a great robot, go to the White House!" »

A blog reader just sent me this link to tell me that my Webinar,  MindManager as a Knowledge Management Tool: How I use MindManager and Lotus Notes to get things done, is now up for replay on the MindJet web site. Apparently, they (Mindjet/WebEx) ran into some technical difficulties and lost the last 20 minutes of audio. That's too bad, because we covered some powerful uses of MindManager and Lotus as tools for Personal Knowledge Management. You watch the silent part can make up your own narrative. if you come up with something great, post it to you tube and send me a link!

Judging from my email, there seems to be considerable interest having me do a follow-up webinar; I'll definitely consider that for the future. If you have topics you'd like to see me cover in greater detail, please leave your comments on this blog post. I'll review these comments as ideas for possible future webinars.

Here's a link to the webinar replay.

Enjoy!

I've been focused on key client and eProductivity projects for the past two weeks; I do plan to resurface next week. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this thought on technology.

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

Putt's Law

You may still have a few Marshmallow Peeps lying around. What should you do with them? Wikipedia has some interesting ideas but why not advance the cause of scientific research?

Link: Peep Research

I've owned a handful of Palm devices since the early Palm Pilot days and I've always liked the simplicity and general reliability of the Palm OS. The Palm platform is also very big at the David Allen Company, where most of us have Treos - either the 650 or 700p.  Other than press releases, Palm's been long on promises and short on innovation with the Palm/Treo platform. (I know about the recent Linux announcement, but I'm not sure I want to wait that long...)

So, I'm thinking about getting a new smart phone. My initial motivation was to find a phone with EVDO Rev A capability to speed up my use of PDANet. My tests with the Treo 700p and EVDO found it to be a worthwhile productivity upgrade.

This an opportunity to revisit the Palm vs Windows Mobile decision. Whatever I decide, I don't want to lose the functionality I presently enjoy

I sat down tonight to make a list of things that the vendors would have me believe that I can do with a Windows Mobile device:


Continue Reading "Is it time to switch to the Windows Mobile Platform?" »

After my successful Webinar on how I use Lotus Notes and MindManager to get things done, Peter Simoons, an IBM Executive in the Netherlands, wrote to me to point out that I was still using the Notes Workspace to manage my databases:

...I had to smile when you showed your desktop, hey Eric you are on Lotus 7.02, the desktop is so Notes 4 or maybe even earlier! According to Lotus you should be using the bookmark bar and that one can still be divided into folders for better separation of the different chapters, like you chose Tabs in the desktop. that will give you another clean desktop. I made the switch when the Bookmark bar was announced...

Peter went on to blog about this in a well-written post: Lotus Notes: Workspace or Open List...

As an eProductivity specialist, I like to think of myself as a forward thinker, so Peter's email got my attention. We exchanged a few emails and I invited Peter to a web meeting so that we could show one another how we organize our Notes databases and why we do it the way we do. Peter accepted my offer and promptly sent me an invitation to use IBM's Corporate SameTime server for the meeting. I think SameTime is a powerful tool, and I use it daily to meet with clients and colleagues. It works great. Unfortunately, while IBM makes great stuff, they apparently don't eat enough of their own dog food but that's another very recently (and still) painful story.  Given the problems I encountered, I proposed that we ditch the IBM site and use my own SameTime 7.5 server. I'm pleased to report that my SameTime Server worked like a charm and we were able to meet without any further difficulty.

A productive meeting
Yesterday, Peter showed me his Notes workspace (He's on Notes 8 beta) and how he's using the bookmark bar to organize his databases. Next, I showed him my Notes workspace and how I organize my hundreds of Lotus Notes databases across a dozen tabs. It became apparent that the primary difference in our use is that Peter has access to only a handful of Notes databases - these can easily be kept on the bookmark bar and nested in bookmark folders. On the other hand, I routinely need quick visual access to a great many Notes databases and I like to see them all at a glance. I also like to see the number of unread items and the servers that the databases are on - something that is lost when using bookmarks.
Continue Reading "The Notes workspace is so last century, or is it?" »

For those of you who are still waiting patiently to view the MindJet Webinar on using Lotus Notes and MindManager, Mindjet is working on fixing a problem with the WebEx recording.

We had a great turnout with over 450 people registered and over 250 attendees in the live webinar - all but 20 of whom stayed 25 minutes overtime for the Q&A. In addition, I've corresponded with many of you about potential topics for future webinars on these and other topics. Thank you for your feedback. It's always welcome.

As soon as Mindjet fixes the problem review the recording, we will make it available to the public.

Thanks for your patience!

While many of my posts focus on the productive use of technology, there are those unfortunate times when the result is anything but productive.

Take today, for example. An IBM exec invited me to a SameTime meeting on the IBM SameTime Conference site. Simple enough. I logged in and I clicked on the "test meeting" option. I then noticed that the certificates had expired. I could have clicked away, but I thought to myself,  "self, if you can't trust IBM, who can you trust?" so I clicked OK and allowed the SameTime meeting room setup to begin prompting me to update [destroy] my machine [thank you very ,much IBM] by taking my perfectly working ThinkPad T60p replacing all of my working VM and SameTime code with old versions. [Note to IBM: It's time to eat your own dog food and run current versions of your product on all of your public servers - just like you encourage your clients to do! Another note to IBM: Please write a tech note on how victims of your web sites can recover from their visit. I would be happy to test this document.]

Continue Reading "New blog category: DeProductivity" »

OK, this is both a rant and a request for help. If you are not up to reading either click away....

Last week, after my webinar on how I use Lotus Notes and MindManager, an IBM executive contacted me to point out that I was still using the Notes workspace and that it was "so last century." (My thoughts on that in another post)

I wrote to this executive and explained why I had found the workspace most productive for my work style. I invited him to show me his Notes setup with the bookmark bar and the new features in Notes 8. He graciously agreed and promptly setup a web meeting on the IBM corporate SameTime server. The plan was that we would both use SameTime to share our desktops and learn from one another. (Isn't that what collaboration and web tools are supposed to help us do?) SameTime 7.5 works great; it's a wonderful tool and I've rarely had any problems with it. Unless you are trying to use IBM's own corporate SameTime server. I use SameTime 7.5 web conferencing frequently, both at ICA and at The David Allen Company.

To make a long and frustrating story short, I logged into the IBM SameTime server, (which I now realize must have been either SameTime 3.1 or possibly a 6.x version), and acknowledged the certificate errors and allow it to install the plugins and VM stuff on my machine - even though I knew I was current on everything because I had just used it with my SameTime 7.5 server earlier.

I was prompted to reboot. Irritating, but OK.

5 minutes later, I log back into the IBM SameTime server to do a test meeting.

BAM!

Continue Reading "IBM/Microsoft/Sun: Why can't we all just get along?" »

A few years ago, I blogged about what I think is the ultimate PC accessory. There are thousands of reasons I do not yet have one. Now I may be one step closer...

The team at Fab@Home have posted open source plans to build your own 3D printer.



Via Popular Mechanics April 2007:

Engineers from Cornell University are trying to convince people to build their own "rapid prototyping machine" - essentially a 3D printer that can "print" objects, such as bottles, or watchbands. the scientists hope their Fab@Home design, which can be assembled from about $2400 in parts, will spur innovation, and do for 3D Printing what home computer kits in the 1970s did for the PC.

Way cool. I remember riding the wave of technology in the pre-PC era. I tried the same with robotics, but that wave has yet to pick up. This is really exciting and I think it shows great potential to democratize innovation.

Continue Reading "The Printed World - Democratizing Innovation" »

Last night, Amy and Wendy came into my office frantic that they had lost many pages of a script they were writing when they attempted to cut and paste the text from OneNote 2003 to Word 2003.

Amy and Wendy had worked all day on a OneNote document, carefully pressing CTRL+S as they went along. They then cut a text selection from OneNote to paste into Word.

For whatever reason, the clipboard did not transfer to Word. They tried to paste it back into OneNote. Nothing.

Panicked at losing pages of work, they called me.  

Edit Undo would not help them. They assured me that they had been pressing CTRL+S all afternoon.

Only now, did we discover that CTRL+S in OneNote does nothing! It's not even an option!

Continue Reading "Be careful with OneNote and saving your work" »

Today, I had a near death experience that will no doubt change me forever. I will certainly never ride a horse again. I have never really liked horses anyway; now I have good reason.

This afternoon, after church and shopping, I agreed to take my daughters horseback riding.  Everything was going fine until my horse started bouncing out of control.  I tried with all my might to hang on, but I started to slide out of the saddle. Just when things could not possibly get worse, my foot got caught in the stirrup.  I fell head first to the ground. Fortunately, I  hit my head on the horse riding next to me. This broke my fall as my head hit the ground. With my foot still stuck in the stirrup, my head continued to bounce harder and harder as the horse did not stop or even slow down. I tried to scream for help but the blood rushed to my head and I could barely make a sound. I tried to reach for the reigns, dangling in front of me, but everything kept turning around and around.

Just as I was giving up hope and losing consciousness...

Continue Reading "Thank goodness for heroes" »